[wp-forums] Long Time Lurker, Few Observations

[Andrea Rennick]

"Following the support link provided in the
Plugin's (note: or Theme's) Extend listing page ensures that the subject is
pre-pended, and the topic is tagged, with the Plugin's name."

This is currently broken. :)

Go try one and see.

A.




On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Chip Bennett <chip at chipbennett.net> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 4:33 PM, Jackson Whelan <jw at jacksonwhelan.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Howdy,
> >
> > I've actively been trying to help in the forums whenever possible.
> Nothing
> > makes me sadder than an unhappy WordPress user.
> >
> > Kudos to all who have been doing this all along. It's a great way to
> teach
> > yourself to be patient with people.
> >
> > My few observations;
> >
> > - Code often gets scrubbed from the forum post after the fact, and the OP
> > is unaware. If there was some way of alerting users to this so that they
> > could use pastebin like they should, it would certainly help resolve
> things
> > for them faster.
> >
>
> While I would like to see a *bit* more leeway here (the "about 10 lines of
> code" sometimes gets taken WAY too literally), there's not really much we
> can do. Just about the only viable option would be to have the moderator
> *move* the code to a pastebin - but that is asking entirely too much of the
> mods.
>
> Perhaps a follow-up reply to indicate the code-moderation would be in
> order?
> That way, at least the people involved in the thread would get email
> notification.
>
> >
> > - Posts about specific plugins are often missing the [Plugin: Plugin
> Name]
> > from the title of the post, despite being tagged correctly. So you end up
> > with generic post titles like 'Not Working', which upon closer inspection
> is
> > about a specific plugin I know nothing about. Perhaps this is user error
> but
> > it seems inconsistent.
> >
>
> There's a very specific reason for this (and it pertains to your next
> point): the way that the Topic subject gets pre-pended with [Plugin: Plugin
> Name] is by posting the topic through the Plugin's specific support forum,
> rather than in the general forum. Following the support link provided in
> the
> Plugin's (note: or Theme's) Extend listing page ensures that the subject is
> pre-pended, and the topic is tagged, with the Plugin's name.
>
> If a post is tagged, but doesn't have a pre-pended subject, that's because
> someone has tagged the post after the fact.
>
> >
> > - People don't read instructions. This document is well written -
> > http://codex.wordpress.org/**Forum_Welcome<
> http://codex.wordpress.org/Forum_Welcome>- but I'd be willing to bet that
> maybe 2 out of 10 new visitors to the forum
> > actually read it. I think more painfully obvious instructions on the new
> > topic form would help. Something to the effect of 'Help us help you. Make
> > sure to read the Forum Welcome before posting. State your problem clearly
> > and the steps to replicate it (ie: "It doesn't work" will not cut it).
> > Include a link to your site. Use wordpress.pastebin.com to share code.'
> > You get the idea...
> >
>
> At the very least, the sticky posts should be made a LOT more prominent -
> as
> in, obnoxiously prominent. (And perhaps, culled from time to time.)
>
> ...and if I can have another $0.02: thanks again to all the mods; you all
> do
> amazing work!
>
> Chip
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>



-- 
-- 
Andrea Rennick, http://wpebooks.com and http://ronandandrea.com
Co-author of WordPress All-In-One For Dummies http://rml.me/aio